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BREAKING – “John Brennan tapped to lead CIA,” by Josh Gerstein: “President Obama will announce [at 1 p.m. today] that he’s nominating the White House’s point person on counterterrorism, John Brennan, to be the next CIA director … Brennan, a 25-year veteran of the CIA, [is] Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. He’s expected to appear with Obama … at a White House event where the president will also announce his nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) [for] defense secretary. [The White House says in talking points supporting his nomination:] ‘Brennan’s career of service and extraordinary record has prepared him to be an outstanding director of the CIA. … Since 9/11, he has been on the front lines in the fight against al Qaeda.’ White House officials also underscored the close working relationship Brennan has developed with the president over the past four years, as Brennan led the administration’s response to a string of attempted terrorist attacks. …

“Brennan would fill a vacancy created when retired Gen. David Petraeus abruptly resigned … Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell has been filling in as acting director … and was [the other] contender … Before becoming a top adviser to Obama during the 2008 campaign, Brennan spent more than two decades at the CIA as an analyst and served as the agency’s station chief in Saudi Arabia. During the Bush era, he served as deputy executive director of the CIA and later as director of the National Counterterrorism Center.” http://politi.co/UCy3Le

--A former CIA official: “Brennan's a great pick, but. … Morell is a great guy too. Morell is trusted inside the Agency … and has a bias toward responsible action. It'll be a terrific Brennan-Morell duo if Morell stays on. …. [H]e'll be under serious consideration for any number of other roles inside the administration if he wants a new challenge.”

SHOT … Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III: “You respect authority and I respect coach [Mike] Shanahan but at the same time you have to step up and be a man sometimes. There was no way I was coming out of the game.” –NBC Sports’ Pro Football Talk

--CHASER … “Morning” Joe Scarborough: “Shanahan should be fired … You do not risk your franchise player a couple of times in a month.”

SUNDAY SHOWS ROUGH UP HAGEL – A White House official emails: “We believe Hagel will be confirmed. There has been a fair bit of heat … but only one Senator, Sen. Cruz [of Texas], has gone on the record to say he’ll vote ‘no.’ (And we appreciate Ted Cruz’s comments during his first week on the job). Lots of Senators say they have questions they want addressed in the hearing. That’s not unusual. We believe in end – the nomination will be fine. Notably McConnell didn’t come out against. Important to remember that a lot of the Republican opposition is due to fact he bucked his party by opposing the Iraq war. Some Rs are still smarting over that – but don’t think it will ultimately amount to trouble for his nomination.

“He will have enthusiastic support of veterans service organizations. And he will be first SecDef who was an enlisted man – that will be popular with the troops. And as Max Cleland said: At the end of the day, are senators really going to look a veteran-hero – who still has two Purple Hearts, and shrapnel in his chest – in the eye and say they aren’t going to support him? Foreign policy has a … tradition of bipartisan[ship] … New START treaty … got 71 votes.”

--A Senate Democratic aide: “There are a number of Democrats very much on the fence who either were not personally close to Hagel during his time in the Senate or who have arrived since Hagel retired. Many of these Democrats are, at minimum, confused by Hagel's past statements and positions on Israel and Iran. For these Democrats, the only reason to support Hagel is out of pure loyalty to the President. That is a major consideration, obviously, but Hagel has some explaining to do on his past statements. A path exists for him to be confirmed, but if Republicans are going to oppose him en masse, the administration can't simply take it for granted that they have 51 Democratic votes for Hagel. They will need to work it.”

--MARK HALPERIN, on TIME.com: “[I]f Hagel has a good confirmation sherpa and performs well in his courtesy calls and at his hearings, he will likely be confirmed. But/and at a pretty high cost. Expect a LOT of people to want to testify against him. And don’t rule out a filibuster of this nomination, which would, obviously, change the math.”

BILL KRISTOL MAY START NEW FISCAL GROUP -- Kenneth P. Vogel: “One Kristol-linked group, the Emergency Committee for Israel, has already aired ads targeting … Hagel … and is planning a ‘substantial’ paid-media campaign opposing the nomination. … Another Kristol-linked group, the Center for American Freedom, has signaled its intent to go after other prospective Obama nominees. Plus, Kristol and his allies have been talking about starting a ‘reformist’ organization to recraft Republican fiscal policies and champion a rising generation of Republicans, such as Kristol favorites Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan. The hypothetical group, modeled on the defunct Democratic Leadership Council, would join an expanding network of media platforms and nimble nonprofits for Kristol and mark an ambitious expansion into domestic policy.” http://politi.co/UC7KEV

**A message from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donohue delivers his annual State of American Business address this Thursday. Donohue will identify the top priorities for the U.S. Chamber to build a stronger, more prosperous economy for all Americans in 2013. **

SECRETARY CLINTON BACK AT WORK TODAY – AFP’s Jo Biddle: “Clinton has been sidelined for four weeks, since she was taken ill on her return from a trip to Europe on December 7 … [T]he State Department's schedule … released late Sunday revealed the top diplomat will meet at 9:15 am … with her assistant secretaries … A series of other meetings is planned through the week, including talks at the White House on Tuesday with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon … The high point of the week is set to be Thursday, when Clinton will host visiting Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the State Department and welcome him for a working dinner. … Clinton has said she still plans to testify … about the results of the probe into the Benghazi attack, but as yet no date has been set.”

THE NEXT CLIFF – WSJ lead story, “Battle Lines Drawn on Budget : Republicans Say Further Tax Increases Off the Table for Coming Debt Negotiations,” by Siobhan Gorman and Peter Nicholas: “‘The tax issue is finished, over, completed. That's behind us,’ Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) told ABC. He said new tax revenue is ‘absolutely’ off the table as part of any coming negotiations with Democratic lawmakers and Mr. Obama. Democratic leaders say more revenue is needed, mainly by scaling back tax breaks. ‘There are still deductions, credits, special treatments under the tax code that ought to be looked at very carefully,’ Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Democrats' No. 2 leader in the Senate, said on CNN Sunday. … McConnell said … any cuts should target entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which Democrats have been reluctant to cut. …

“Durbin … suggested revisiting … the ability of taxpayers to ‘park their money’ offshore to avoid U.S. taxes. Administration officials have said privately that they want further deficit-cutting deals to be composed roughly of half revenue increases and half spending reductions. … House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), in an interview with The Wall Street Journal editorial page, … also said the GOP wouldn't agree to any more tax increases in the next two years. ‘The tax issue is resolved,’ he said. … Many lawmakers hoped that last week's resolution of the fiscal-cliff tax-and-spending issues would free lawmakers to start considering a tax-code overhaul, but other pending fiscal matters are complicating the process.”

--WSJ Opinion pages, “The Education of John Boehner : Leverage for the next clash: GOP willingness to let the spending sequester take effect,” by Stephen Moore, a member of the Journal's editorial board: “‘At one point several weeks ago,’ Mr. Boehner says, ‘the president said to me, “We don't have a spending problem.”’ I am talking to Mr. Boehner in his office on the second floor of the Capitol, 72 hours after the historic House vote to take America off the so-called fiscal cliff … Throughout our hour-long conversation, … he takes long drags on one cigarette after another. Mr. Boehner looks battle weary … At one point he grimly says: ‘I need this job like I need a hole in the head.’ … Boehner says that after he recovered from his astonishment [at Obama’s spending comment] – ‘They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system’ -- he replied: ‘Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with ObamaCare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem.’ He repeated this message so often, he says, that toward the end of the negotiations, the president became irritated and said: ‘I'm getting tired of hearing you say that.’ …

“Why has the president been such an immovable force when it comes to cutting spending? ‘Two reasons,’ Mr. Boehner says. ‘He's so ideological himself, and he's unwilling to take on the left wing of his own party.’ That reluctance explains why Mr. Obama originally agreed with the Boehner proposal to raise the retirement age for Medicare, the speaker says, but then ‘pulled back. He admitted in meetings that he couldn't sell things to his own members. But he didn't even want to try.’ … Boehner says he won't engage in any more closed-door budget negotiations with the White House, which are ‘futile.’ … ‘Sure, I will meet with the president if he wants to,’ but House Republicans will from now on proceed with establishing a budget for the year following what is known as ‘regular order,’ and they will insist that Harry Reid and Senate Democrats pass a budget—something they haven't done in nearly four years—before proceeding. …

“I ask Mr. Boehner if he will take the debt-ceiling talks to the brink—risking a government shutdown and debt downgrade from the credit agencies … The debt bill is ‘one point of leverage,’ Mr. Boehner says, but he also hedges, noting that it is ‘not the ultimate leverage.’ He says that Republicans won't back down from the so-called Boehner rule: that every dollar of raising the debt ceiling will require one dollar of spending cuts over the next 10 years. Rather than forcing a deal, the insistence may result in a series of monthly debt-ceiling increases. The Republicans' stronger card, Mr. Boehner believes, will be the automatic spending sequester trigger that trims all discretionary programs—defense and domestic.

“It now appears that the president made a severe political miscalculation … with the sequester idea in 2011. As Mr. Boehner tells the story: Mr. Obama was sure Republicans would call for ending the sequester … because it included deep defense cuts. But Republicans never raised the issue. ‘It wasn't until literally last week that the White House brought up replacing the sequester,’ Mr. Boehner says. ‘They said, “We can't have the sequester.” They were always counting on us to bring this to the table.’ Mr. Boehner says he has significant Republican support, including GOP defense hawks, on his side for letting the sequester do its work. ‘I got that in my back pocket,’ the speaker says. He is counting on the president's liberal base putting pressure on him when cherished domestic programs face the sequester's sharp knife. Republican willingness to support the sequester, Mr. Boehner says, is ‘as much leverage as we're going to get.’ That leverage, he reasons, is what will force Democrats to the table on entitlements. …

“Boehner is surprisingly optimistic about getting a deal done on corporate and personal income-tax reform. ‘The president understands the need for tax reform.’”

--ROSS DOUTHAT, conservative NYT columnist, “Boehner, American Hero”: “Boehner has done his country a more important service over the last two years than almost any other politician in Washington. … [I]t’s been a kind of disaster management — a sequence of bomb-defusal operations that have prevented our dysfunctional government from tipping into outright crisis.” http://nyti.ms/V1m4cd

--‏@Lawrence (Lawrence O'Donnell): “Boehner isn't a hero but @DouthatNYT is right that Boehner is much better at his job than most people realize.”

--“Boehner’s tough road ahead,” by Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan: “Boehner allies are urging him … to do something he never has before: be willing to shut down the government or default on the nation’s debt to extract compromises from the White House. … Boehner will hold meetings with several of the lawmakers who opposed him for speaker in one-on-one sessions over the next few weeks … When House Republicans head to their members-only retreat Jan. 16, Boehner and his top lieutenants will publicly entertain how to better resolve their differences with conservatives, while preventing their party from fracturing. The unity push is aimed at jamming Obama and rallying conservatives. Boehner, people close to him say, needs to be willing to ‘shoot the hostage.’” http://politi.co/Wn2GC6

2016 WATCH – “Rand Paul Has Arrived In Israel,” by Business Insider’s Grace Wyler, in Tel Aviv: “Sen. Rand Paul kicked off his trip to Israel Sunday, joining several prominent GOP operatives for an eight-day tour … Paul has … meetings this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli President Shimon Peres, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, King Abdullah II, and other prominent Israeli politicians. For parts of the trip, Paul will also be accompanied by about 50 evangelical leaders and party activists, including the state GOP chairs of Iowa and South Carolina … The tour was funded by the conservative American Family Association, and organized by evangelical kingmaker David Lane and former pharmaceuticals executive Richard Roberts, a prominent member of the Orthodox Jewish community who donates heavily to the GOP.” http://read.bi/VJJWhX

MEDIAWATCH: Tonight’s the last night for ABC News “Nightline” in its historic 11:35 spot, before it moves back an hour tomorrow night to make way for an earlier “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Tonight’s “Nightline” includes a Barbara Walters interview with Mariah Carey.

--Harper's Bazaar’s Feb. issue, “Megyn Kelly: Fox's Lady: The outspoken FOX news anchor suffers no fools, gladly,” by Julia Reed: “Prior to November, Kelly, a 42-year-old former lawyer, was already one of Fox’s fastest-rising stars, famous for both her leggy, Hitchcock-blonde persona and her brains, specifically an ability to cut quickly to the heart of complex issues and a willingness to jump in and talk over blabbermouthy guests. But, after election night, Kelly’s profile skyrocketed. … While Kelly deftly credits her boss Fox News chief Roger Ailes with the idea of doing the decision desk interview (‘wouldn’t have made that trek if it hadn’t been for him.’), in the days that followed she was showered with kudos. … Bill Hemmer of Fox’s ‘America’s Newsroom,’ Kelly’s onetime co-anchor, references … ‘her greatest asset as a TV partner – the Megyn Kelly curveball. She always brings an element of surprise. It’s as if a record is spinning and it gets stopped mid-song by Megyn’s hand.’ …

“Brit Hume, then Fox’s Washington managing editor, had seen Kelly’s … audition tape, and he was blown away. ‘Megyn’s a rare combination,’ Hume says. ‘She’s smart, she’s curious, she has enormous energy, and she’s cheerful. Sometimes serious people come across as too combative. Megyn doesn’t, though she’s as serious as they come.’ … Kelly … says her [future] plan is the same as it’s always been. ‘Just keep working hard and doing a good job, and hopefully whatever door I need to be open will be open when I get there.’” http://bit.ly/Uvb0Al

SPORTS BLINK – DRIVING THE DAY: Bowl Championship Series title game, Alabama vs. Notre Dame, 8:30 tonight, ESPN, Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens… Friday’s WSJ “Arena” cover called it, “THE BIGGEST GAME EVER … one for the ages, a classic face-off between tradition and modernity. America’s most national team, Notre Dame, is undefeated [this season] after two decades in the wilderness. Alabama is a sleek machine that works the system flawlessly.” … Line: Alabama by 9 ½ … Sports Illustrated: Alabama 23, Notre Dame 16.

--“BCS Championship … [A]ll eyes on Tide and Irish,” by AP National Writer Paul Newberry in Miami: “They are storied programs that stir plenty of passions, college football's North and South versions of the New York Yankees. …[T]his was shaping up as one of the most anticipated games in years, a throwback to the era when … it was a big deal for teams from different parts of the country to meet in a bowl, when everyone took sides based on where they happened to live. … ESPN executives were hopeful of getting the highest ratings of the BCS era. … [A] seat in one of the executive suites [was] going for … $60,000 on StubHub, … and even a less-than-prime spot in the corner of the upper deck [was] more than $900.

“‘This is, to me, the ultimate matchup in college football,’ said Brent Musberger, the lead announcer for ESPN. For Alabama (12-1), this is a chance to be remembered as a full-fledged dynasty. The [Crimson] Tide will be trying to claim its third national championship in four years and become the first school to win back-to-back BCS titles, a remarkable achievement given the ever-increasing parity of the college game and having to replace five players from last year's title team who were picked in the first two rounds of the NFL draft. … [T]he Fighting Irish (12-0) weren't even ranked at the start of the season.

--TOP TALKER -- WashPost A1, “Injured Griffin deepens pain of the Redskins’ playoff loss,” by Dave Sheinin: “It was a complex … emotion that coursed through the packed stands of FedEx Field early Sunday evening, in the waning moments of the Washington Redskins’ first home playoff game in 13 years. It contained elements of the predictable despair that would greet a loss in any Redskins’ playoff game … But it also had dark undercurrents of something closer to dread and anger, spawned by two critical questions that are as yet unanswered: Is Robert Griffin III going to be okay? And did the Redskins compromise their franchise quarterback’s health and long-term future in the fourth quarter of their 24-14 loss to the Seattle Seahawks in the first round of the NFL playoffs? … Should an obviously hobbled Griffin have been in the game at all when his knee finally buckled in the fourth quarter? And if Griffin was insisting on staying in, as he later said, should someone have overruled him?

“Redskins Coach Mike Shanahan [said Griffin told him]: “‘Trust me. I want to be in there, and I deserve to be in there.’ And I couldn’t disagree with him … You have to go with your gut. I’m not saying my gut was right. . . . I’ll probably second-guess myself.’ Said Griffin: ‘Mike asked me if I was okay, and I said yes. I’m the quarterback of this team. My job is to be out there, if I can play. … I wasn’t coming out of that game.’ … But the lasting image of this game will be of Griffin, in obvious agony on the turf after his knee buckled under him in the fourth quarter, unable to maneuver himself to the loose ball that rolled just out of his reach — a fumbled snap that ultimately was recovered by the Seahawks. … Griffin’s Redskins teammates kneeled in prayer while the team’s medical personnel tended to the fallen superstar.” http://wapo.st/Uv1JIA

--“NFL 2012 TV Recap” – NFL release: “NFL games accounted for 31 of the 32 most-watched TV shows among all programming last fall [The exception: At #23, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade on NBC] … For the first time ever, an NFL game was the week’s most-watched TV show in all 17 weeks of the season. … NBC ‘Sunday Night Football’ ranked as the most-watched primetime program for the third consecutive fall season averaging 21.4 million viewers. The Week 17 SNF game (Cowboys-Redskins) was the most-watched Sunday primetime game in NFL regular-season history with an average of 30.3 million viewers. …

“Sunday late afternoon NFL games continue to draw more viewers than anything on TV. FOX averaged 24.8 million viewers for its Sunday national telecasts and CBS averaged 23.0 million viewers. The FOX and CBS national telecasts and NBC ‘Sunday Night Football’ are the only programs on TV averaging more than 20 million viewers. NFL games accounted for the 45 most-watched programs on television (since Sept. 5) among adults aged 18-49 – with CBS, FOX, ESPN and NBC each represented on that list. ESPN’s ‘Monday Night Football’ was the most-watched series on cable for the seventh consecutive year with an average of 12.8 million viewers.” See the amazing chart. http://bit.ly/VNr2WS

**A message from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: What is the state of American business? Find out this Thursday when U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donohue delivers his annual State of American Business address, outlining the key challenges and opportunities facing the country and the business community. Donohue will identify the top priorities for the U.S. Chamber to build a stronger, more prosperous economy for all Americans in 2013. **